Context-aware display system for patient rooms
Keywords: Human Computer Interface (HCI), User-interface design, User-centered design; Usability testing, Patient safety, Context-aware design.
Overview of Research
The process of manually assimilating medical data from several disconnected sources (medical devices, diagnostic tests etc.) is prone to errors and hence can be detrimental to patient safety. While powerful software products (ex: IBM InfoSphere Streams) are being developed to assimilate and analyze this data, the presentation of this data to clinicians has not been addressed. This project aims to employ user-centered design techniques (online surveys and focus groups) to identify clinician and patient requirements pertaining to data visualization (hardware and user-interface). The display system developed will be ambient and context-aware, i.e., it will recognize the clinician, the patient and automatically display pertinent data as per the context. Usability testing performed on this system at Care-Lab in the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute will measure improvements in effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction of clinicians providing acute care. Its effect on patient satisfaction during treatment will also be measured. The overarching objective of this project is to improve the efficiency of doctor-patient interactions in acute care and reduce risk to patient safety through the useful presentation of assimilated medical data on ambient display systems.
Research Team
Manas Bhatnagar, University of Toronto
Alex Mihailidis, University of Toronto
